


two letters and a telegram

by projectcyborg



Series: Receding Horizons [1]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Alternate Reality, Episode Tag, Epistolary, F/M, Fix-It, Illustrated, Realistic Reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-07 23:29:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4282101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/projectcyborg/pseuds/projectcyborg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A 3x08 coda that wrestles with geography and technology.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. (with images)

**Author's Note:**

> So ashamed to be posting G-rated fic about these life ruiners – I’m supposed to be kink bingoing! It’s unsettling to say I needed a fix-it for the finale, because it was so glorious. But equally crushing in twisty and ambivalent ways.
> 
> I wrote the letters out longhand in a notebook through successive drafts, mostly on a long plane flight. CHAPTER TWO is the same story in a TEXT ONLY version for accessibility (or just bad handwriting) – sorry if that looks like a tease. 
> 
> Thanks to [metatxt](http://archiveofourown.org/users/metatxt/) for egging me on and seeing me through a fraught beta process.

That night, Jack pulled an atlas from his bookshelf. He poured himself a whiskey – not nearly as fine as hers – and opened it to Victoria. He turned from page, to page, to page, plotting distances with his fingers.

The next day, at the office, he sat restless at his desk. He shuffled folders, drummed his feet, and frowned. Finally, with a sigh, he flipped a sheet of notepaper, scrawled with fragmentary details from his phone calls, to its unmarked side. He started writing.

[](http://projectjulie.net/files/MFMM/Jackletter.jpg)

Jack chased down the name of Singapore’s most aristocratic hotel, and addressed the letter accordingly. The post was by ship, but she wouldn’t make good time across the East Indies and it just might reach her.

Two weeks later, he received a telegram.

> SAW FATHER OFF, BOOKED PASSAGE HOME ON RMS ORION, ARRIVING OCTOBER 14. DO URGE MR. AND MRS. COLLINS TO STAY ON AT WARDLOW. AND KNOW YOU’RE ALWAYS WELCOME FOR A VISIT. I CAN'T REFUSE YOU ANYTHING.  
>        THE HONOURABLE MISS PHRYNE FISHER

* * *

On the appointed date (and he’d verified the liner’s progress nearly every day), Jack donned his coat and hat and straightened a particularly daring tie. He checked for mail by habit as he crossed his threshold, and dizzied when he found a letter waiting. She'd known his address all along, the minx.

[](http://projectjulie.net/files/MFMM/Phryneletter.jpg)

Jack locked the door and headed for the pier – and if he drove rather faster than his custom, one could surely pardon the infraction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’re often expected to suspend disbelief when it comes to Miss Fisher, I suppose. But honestly, the idea of a trip from Australia to England in a sporting aircraft in 1929 is beyond the pale. The [first aerial circumnavigation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_aerial_circumnavigation) wasn’t until 1924 and required massive preparations, and Phryne’s journey would be fully half that. Witness also the [Western Australian Centenary Air Race](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Australian_Centenary_Air_Race) in 1929: fastest flight times for the 4000 km / 2500 mile trip from Sydney to Perth were under 24 hours in the air, but took 10 days complete in 12 stages to allow for rest and refueling. I’m not sure which exact plane they’re using on the show, but the popular [Gipsy Moth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_DH.60_Moth) which looks similar has a range of only 515 km / 320 miles. Even assuming she had one customized with a larger fuel tank, it seems quite implausible that she’d be able to provision, land, and overnight appropriately across the Malay archipelago, not to mention put up with the Baron’s bad attitude!
> 
> It would be marginally easier to travel across the mainland colonies – but why, when there are ships or trains? I honor her as a daredevil who is hardly known for logical planning, but she’s also fond of her creature comforts – if she wants to go to England and visit family and friends, why not make it less of an ordeal? And if she doesn’t especially, it would be most pragmatic to catch her father up a day by flying to Perth, where he could probably board the same liner he was booked on. Of course, she could also just telegraph her mother and explain his delay!
> 
> But let’s say that there is a certain romance to a longer and more exotic voyage. Perhaps the show is willing to subordinate all of the logistics to the storytelling motive of sending her to England and back. Perhaps this is meant to be a bookend to the opening of the series (I refuse to believe it’s ending). Perhaps it’s all a clumsy setup for a hypothetical UK-based movie (Deb Cox has said "Phryne will fly her light plane all the way, breaking aviatrix records of the day!" – make of that what you will). Perhaps in said reality the trip and return might take much less time than is reasonable (she could hardly be away less than three months) – and/or perhaps Jack might really follow her (that's not the Jack I usually imagine). Perhaps you’re happy working within that scenario too, which is fine! For me, just learning to find pleasure in 1929 immersion, the level of creative license required isn’t sitting well. 
> 
> Still, it seems unsporting to AU away the sentimental parting altogether – I do relish an occasion for love letters! This could be a much more extended epistolary tale, that is to say, but I couldn’t stand to see them separated for so long. I’ve split the difference, and allowed for significant handwaving to get Phryne to Singapore by plane (and find her father a ship or train passage that would arrive in London sooner). She’d be gone a month or two, I estimate – long enough to justify pushing up the wedding and generate some romantic angst, but not so long that I (Jack) can’t bear it. (I got only a vague sense of the canon timeline, but I figure that if Hugh and Dot’s wedding was scheduled for September 21, Phryne probably departs a few weeks before.) Basically: my little story exists to provide a platform for these disproportionate episode notes – but isn’t it more fun this way?
> 
> Tangentially, I looked a bit at [ocean liners](https://books.google.com/books?id=dXrcB9dIv58C&lpg=PA23&dq=These%20Splendid%20Ships%3A%20The%20Story%20of%20the%20Peninsular%20and%20Orient%20Line&pg=PA23#v=onepage&q&f=false) too – has anybody figured out how long the voyage from Melbourne to London would have taken? I’m approximating around a month, presumably via the Suez Canal. Supposedly trips left weekly to ensure regular mail service. The [RMS Orion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Orion) was a real ship, but it didn’t sail until 1934 (I was pleased with the name).
> 
> P.S. I love that Dot and Hugh staying at Phryne’s house is fanon – I’ve seen that in a couple of stories.
> 
> Edited on July 22: you'll find some further crowdsourced research in the comments. My thoughts and feelings about this scenario continue to evolve.


	2. (text transcription)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have corrected "airplane" to "aeroplane" in the transcriptions.

That night, Jack pulled an atlas from his bookshelf. He poured himself a whiskey – not nearly as fine as hers – and opened it to Victoria. He turned from page, to page, to page, plotting distances with his fingers.

The next day, at the office, he sat restless at his desk. He shuffled folders, drummed his feet, and frowned. Finally, with a sigh, he flipped a sheet of notepaper, scrawled with fragmentary details from his phone calls, to its unmarked side. He started writing.

_SEPTEMBER 1929_  
_Phryne — if I may —_  
_Spring — even at City South the birds sing outside my window of a morning. I think of you perched upon my desk in your plumage, serenading me with wit and insight. It seems you drive me to distraction equally by your presence and your absence. If you were here, I wouldn't kiss you — I'd ply you with the casefile from this latest murder._  
_I might kiss you again at a more befitting hour — if you'd have me._  
_I am not and will never be an aeroplane, so it is in these meagre words only that I come after you. I'm sure you know that I do nothing but, and have done for some time. I don't fly, adventure, caper, or carouse, but you must see me follow as you hurtle forward. If you look intently (aspire, perhaps, to a more telescopic condition), you'll find that I'm not still at all, but have been expanding all this while. So patient you are with my astronomic pace. Be a bit less patient waiting for me now — I entreat you. I wish not to pursue you (and certainly not to catch you) but to meet you at a crossroads I can muster the momentum and the will._  
_Make me worry, always — I expect nothing less. You are mistress of the sky today, but I feel as if I've already travelled to the stars. Come back to me, Phryne Fisher._  
_Yours,_  
_JACK_

Jack chased down the name of Singapore’s most aristocratic hotel, and addressed the letter accordingly. The post was by ship, but she wouldn’t make good time across the East Indies and it just might reach her.

Two weeks later, he received a telegram.

> SAW FATHER OFF, BOOKED PASSAGE HOME ON RMS ORION, ARRIVING OCTOBER 14. DO URGE MR. AND MRS. COLLINS TO STAY ON AT WARDLOW. AND KNOW YOU’RE ALWAYS WELCOME FOR A VISIT. I CAN'T REFUSE YOU ANYTHING.  
>        THE HONOURABLE MISS PHRYNE FISHER

* * *

On the appointed date (and he’d verified the liner’s progress nearly every day), Jack donned his coat and hat and straightened a particularly daring tie. He checked for mail by habit as he crossed his threshold, and dizzied when he found a letter waiting. She'd known his address all along, the minx.

 _Jack,_  
_You exasperating man — of course you may. I have vowed to discover every way to wring my name from you, although those that don't require separate continents would be preferable. How delighted I am, though, to find you less taciturn by the pen. I thought of you as I was flying — oh such sights! Turquoise reefs and verdant jungles, Sydney graceful from the air and Port Moresby barely a British toehold in the tropics. But my favourite views were upwards, during the night crossings over open ocean — the heavens domed above me like a glittering crown. I could learn to be a telescope under skies like these._  
_Still, this fortnight gave me my fill of piloting — the Indonesian traverse was not an easy journey, a quality shared by my company. Quite certain I could have gotten away with murder, outside of your jurisdiction, but I thought it better to deliver my father to a less rugged means of transport. You didn't believe I was serious about flying him to England? — you should know by now that I'm never serious if I can help it. For you though, my grave gentleman, I might try it on occasion._  
_Besides, I dream of other means of flying — you may be earthbound, Jack, but you make me giddy as a swallow on the wing. As for your kisses – I've wanted nothing more than to have you, and unmistakably so. I'm firmly resolved that you shall kiss me again — you might even call it an impatience. Try to be a little like an aeroplane and make haste._  
_Always,_  
_Phryne_

Jack locked the door and headed for the pier – and if he drove rather faster than his custom, one could surely pardon the infraction.


End file.
